As the Israeli assault on Lebanon enters its ninth day, Hezbollah is continuing to fire rockets into Northern Israel. We go to Haifa to speak with Israeli historian and author Ilan Pappe about the crisis. [includes rush transcript]

Hezbollah is continuing to fire rockets into Northern Israel. Twenty nine Israelis have been killed so far, including 15 civilians. On Wednesday, Hezbollah fired over 100 missiles hitting Haifa and, for the first time, Nazareth. The rocket attacks killed two boys in Nazareth–they were both Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Nine others were wounded in the attack.

Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, author and political scientist at the University of Haifa. His latest book is "A History of Modern Palestine." He joins us on the line from Haifa.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMYGOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I wanted to bring Professor Ilan Pappe into this conversation. Hezbollah is continuing to fire rockets into Northern Israel. 29 Israelis have been killed so far, including 15 civilians. On Wednesday, Hezbollah fired over 100 missiles, hitting Haifa and for the first time Nazareth. The rocket attacks killed two boys there. They were both Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. Nine others were wounded in the attack.

We’re going to go to Northern Israel to speak with Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, author and political scientist at the University of Haifa. His latest book is called A History of Modern Palestine. Joining us on the line from Haifa, Professor Pappe. Thank you for joining us. We’re also speaking to Ralph Nader, on the line here in the United States.

ILANPAPPE: Hello, Amy.

AMYGOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you talk about what’s happening in Haifa right now, the rocket attacks on your city, and your response?

ILANPAPPE: Well, today was a relative quiet day. There were several sirens, but no rockets fell, unlike tomorrow. But I’m aware that what we are going through pales in comparison to what goes on on the other side of the border, where a large number of civilians have been killed.

And I think I can talk also as a spokesperson for the Israeli Committee Against the War, that the citizens of Haifa, Palestinians and Jews alike, there are quite a large number of them who ask probably the same questions that Ralph Nader asked before. Why doesn’t our government accept the offer of the United Nations to an immediate ceasefire and the beginning of diplomatic negotiations? And why does the United States, in the most immoral position I have ever recalled since the end of the second World War, tells us and the poor citizens of Lebanon that it doesn’t mind the mutual killing of citizens, so that the military operation could go on, where it knows that it has the power to stop today the shelling of both Israelis and Lebanese and to start maybe a more fruitful negotiations, not only over the questions of the prisoners of war, but maybe even over the question of the comprehensive solution.

AMYGOODMAN: How important is the U.S. stance, Professor Pappe?

ILANPAPPE: Immensely so. I think that, first of all, it has the power, like it never had before, to stop an escalation, which has already claimed the lives of many innocent people. So that’s a very powerful position. Secondly, it’s the only superpower in the area and in the world, and that’s a very great responsibility. And thirdly, without the U.S. support, the aggressive Israeli policies, not only towards Lebanon, but also towards the Gaza Strip and towards the Occupied Territories, would have changed dramatically. So I would say that in fact the Middle East conflict continues, very much because — not only because, but primarily because — of the American position.

AMYGOODMAN: Professor Pappe, we’re hearing over and over again in the U.S. media about how the Israeli population is fully behind their government, especially as the rockets continue to slam into Haifa, now Nazareth. Is this true?

ILANPAPPE: Yeah, it is true. It is true that the Jewish society — as you know, 20% of the Israelis are Palestinians, and I doubt very much whether they support this policy, but it is true that the majority of the Jewish population supports the government, but they do it because (a) they’re misinformed — nobody in Israel can see what are the results of the Israeli bombing in Lebanon — and because it is an indoctrinated society that, through the educational system and the media and the political system, gets a very distorted picture of the reality around it.

So you can get the consensus around the government policies, but, you know, from history we know that the majority support for certain policies doesn’t vindicate it or doesn’t justify it. And for the first time, I think, this war actually — and this is my great hope, as well — is going to bring questions to the fore, because I think more and more Israelis realize that what they were promised a week ago, that in 48 hours or so the mighty Israeli Air Force would settle all the problems of the Middle East for once and for all, this promise was made in vain, and my hope is that the Israelis will start to ask questions that would first lead to the end of this war, but maybe would start an era of pluralism in Israel, which pretends to be a democracy, with some of the more bizarre and dangerous policies of the government would be questioned by its society.

AMYGOODMAN: We started the show in Beirut, now talking to you in Haifa, talking to Ralph Nader here in the United States. And I want to go back to Ralph Nader, but I want to go from all of these places also to Gaza, where a parallel Israeli assault continues to claim lives on a daily basis. Wednesday, 30 Israeli armored vehicles entered Gaza’s Mughazi refugee camp at sunrise, just hours after Israel’s withdrawal from northern Gaza Tuesday. Israeli soldiers occupied the camp while bulldozers leveled the surrounding farmland. An Israeli drone fired a missile into the edge of the camp. Six Palestinians were killed, over 50 injured, in the attack. Over a hundred Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military over the last three weeks. Many of the casualties have been children. A UN Security Council resolution opposing the offensive was vetoed by the United States last week.

To discuss the latest developments in Gaza, we’re joined by Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and community activist in northern Gaza, also a health development consultant for Gaza’s Union of Health Work Committees. Dr. El-Farra, welcome to Democracy Now!

DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Thank you very much for interviewing me.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about the situation on the ground right now?

DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Yes. Right now the east of the middle camps in Gaza Strip, the Israelis — as you mentioned earlier, at least seven people were killed, and I am sorry that one of the injured was one of the health emergency team whose both legs were amputated. And the army tanks destroyed the power plant in that area, so the whole area of the middle camps, besides the majority of the Gaza Strip, still doesn’t have electrical power. The hospitals are working under heavy load of increasing number of casualties, besides the [inaudible] deaths. We are working while the drug stores in Gaza Strip are in very bad need for medications and medical supplies. So, the situation is actually deteriorating.

The Israeli occupying forces are moving from one place to another. After they finished with Beit Hanoun village in the north, they are moving to the middle camps. They are continuing their assault against different ministries, the buildings, and while they are bombing Gaza Strip official buildings, they don’t avoid civilians. And I can say the whole situation is a very ugly situation and is not promising. We still live in big prison, Gaza. I call it big prison. A whole nation is living under collective punishment. A whole nation is captured, is really captured. We are captured. We are chased by the gunboats from the west of Gaza and the army tanks in the east and north, while the air raids continue on top of Gaza.

And I’m sorry to know that the world, the media or mainstream media doesn’t cover what’s going on in Gaza, which is, they are attacking Gaza piece by piece, and it is very — I feel sorry for what’s happening here. But despite all that, today I was in the middle camps, just two kilometers away from the incursion area, and I’m pleased to tell you that I was there — while hearing to the bombing happening in the east, I was there with children who are trying to have a little fun by being through a summer camp in that area, a summer camp organized by one of the civil society organizations trying to find some fun for those kids. So, while the army tanks with their bombing loudly, those children were dancing to the folklore music, Palestinian folklore music, and these children living in the refugee camp, and they named their camp the "Camp of Freedom." And so, Palestinian people are still fighting in different ways, resisting in different ways, towards our freedom.

AMYGOODMAN: Dr. Mona El-Farra, speaking to us in Gaza. As you listen to this, Ralph Nader, in the United States, the U.S. press very much backing off what’s happening in Gaza, as they focus on Lebanon. Your response.

RALPHNADER: Yes, and also focusing on the evacuation of American citizens, of which there are far more than 25,000. The Canadian paper said there are 25,000 Arab Canadians in Lebanon. There’s probably a quarter of a million. So, low-balling American citizens is another tactic of the Bush administration.

But getting back to the terrible situation in Gaza and the West Bank, I think the framework of analysis here for Americans in trying to persuade their government to pursue peace instead of mayhem and war in the Middle East and in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the following. Just ask four simple questions: Who is the occupier, invader, and who is seizing more land and water? It’s Israel. Who has the most military power and domination, by a thousand to one, the most modern, probably, army in the world, after the United States? Who has slain more civilians and destroyed more civilian homes and infrastructure? Again, Israel. And who has the full backing of the U.S. government? Israel.

Now, doesn’t it seem logical that the parties who should take the initiative in what they declare should be a two-state solution should be Israel and the United States? That’s the essential point here, that the U.S. has an awesome responsibility for that suffering, the deaths and injuries and disease and incarceration of the people of Gaza and the gulag that’s called the West Bank, where more land is being seized, more water is being taken, colonies are expanding, Israeli-only highways are built. I mean, we’re talking here about the biggest prison in the world, and it’s financed in significant part by the U.S. taxpayers and a supine congress. And so, it is very important, because all this is going to lead to more instability in the area, which will boomerang against our own security in the United States.

And all this requires people to speak up, like Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun and the Jewish Americans who were speaking up, like the 300 British Jews who spoke up condemning the devastating attack by Israel against defenseless people in Gaza. And, of course, all over the world the protests that are going on. There are 66 UN resolutions that are still on the books, critical of Israel, that Israel has not complied with. 66, not just the one resolution about disarming Hezbollah.

And so, we’re seeing here a situation, Amy, where even the New York Times, its editorials, the absence of dissenting views on the editorial op-ed page of the New York Times, is abdicating the responsibility that it had to be a more balanced paper when Anthony Lewis used to be a columnist there. So, it’s a terrible situation. It’s only going to get worse.

AMYGOODMAN: And what do you think would happen if the U.S. press brought out the voices of this level of dissent in this country and around the world? What do you think would happen to U.S. public opinion?

RALPHNADER: I think an informed public opinion about more of what’s going on there would lead to more pressure on Congress and the White House to enforce the Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits shipping weapons to any country that uses it offensively. Blowing up trucks with medical supplies and wheat silos in Lebanon certainly qualifies as that.

And I think also it would begin pushing the White House and Congress to an aggressive peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the core conflict that is breeding so much of this Islamic agitation and is not unconnected with the war and quagmire in Iraq. As Gideon Levy said in Ha’aretz the other day, "In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years without a trial, but only we’re allowed to do that, and only we’re allowed to bomb civilian population centers," end-quote. That’s the kind of dissent, humanitarian dissent, [inaudible] a lot of in Israel, but it needs to be encouraged from the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to go to Professor Ilan Pappe, joining us from Haifa. Israel’s basic demands, passed to Beirut by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi: return of the two captured Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah; Hezbollah withdrawal to the Litani River, which is roughly 20 miles north of the current Lebanese-Israeli border; no more rocket attacks against Israel; return by Hamas of the Israeli soldier. Your response, Professor Pappe?

ILANPAPPE: Well, I think the demand for the return of the soldiers has been a pretext, and, in fact, nobody is talking about that demand any more here in Israel. We all forgot about it. This has long time been forgotten. If you want to return captive soldiers, you don’t go and bomb the other side in a way that may harm your chances. So, I don’t think this is the issue at all, and I don’t think these Israeli demands are going to be accepted unilaterally.

I think the Israelis are facing, both in the case of the Hamas and the case of the Hezbollah, two very weak military powers, but determined enough to show the Israelis that there are two options here. One is the option of a very troubled, but nonetheless constructive, dialogue, or the option of destruction and violence.

And I think that these Israeli demands are not made in good faith, and I don’t think that they are really the objective of the Israeli operation either in Lebanon or in Palestine. I think the real target of these operations, which were by the way preplanned and they were not just in a reaction to the abduction of the soldiers, was to try and eliminate the only two resistance movements left in the Middle East that oppose the Israeli decision to unilaterally impose its vision on Palestine, a vision that includes the creation of a greater Israel over most of the West Bank and the enclaving and imprisoning of the Palestinians in two small Bantustans.

And now, the Arab regimes are unable to oppose it. America endorses it. The Europeans seem to be indifferent. And there are only two movements, which are not just guerrilla movements, but also popular social and cultural movements, that oppose these policies. And the Israelis think they have the window of opportunity with the unconditional American support to use force in order to impose their will. And I think that’s the real agenda.

And had the soldiers not been abducted, the Israelis would have chosen another incident, a different incident, to unleash their forces in what they think is a moment of historical opportunity. But I think we all are going to learn that they were wrong, and the price we are all going to pay is going to be very high for this adventurous and reckless policy.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Mona El-Farra, speaking to us from Gaza, the attitude of people on the ground. I mean, you now have Hamas leadership in jail, members of the parliament, of the cabinet. You have, of course, the Israelis saying, the Israeli military saying, that they will stop if the soldier, the Israeli soldier, is returned. Are attitudes changing or hardening on the ground?

DR. MONA EL-FARRA: First, I think the freedom of the captured soldier is a pretense by Israel to go ahead and implement its plan against Gaza, against the Hamas and the different factions of resistance in the Gaza. On the ground, people in Palestine — all people in Palestine and Gaza Strip think it is very easy for them — it is very easy: free the soldiers, free our political prisoners and Hamas, other members who were imprisoned, and the soldier can get out. But it is not as easy as this.

This is a pre-planned military assault against the Gaza Strip. It is part of Israel’s planned expansion in the area and aggression against Palestinian people and not to go ahead with the agenda of negotiation. And I do strongly believe that neither the wall nor the aggression nor the assault against the Palestinian people will bring peace to Israel. I believe the only outlet of this is negotiation and peace, but peace that is built on justice, peace that will guarantee some of the Palestinian national goals. And I believe the long term for us, for the conflict in the area, long term, first to start with two nations, two states, then end up this land will be for both people. And Israel should learn from the history.

AMYGOODMAN: Dr. Mona El-Farra I want to thank you for being with us, physician speaking to us from Gaza; Professor Ilan Pappe, Israeli historian, teaches at the University of Haifa, his latest book is A History of Modern Palestine; and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, speaking to us from right here in the United States.

RALPHNADER: Amy?

AMYGOODMAN: Yes, Ralph?

RALPHNADER: I’d like to point out Tom Hayden’s remarkable statement showing his change from supporting the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to now being a critic of U.S. policy and Israeli policy in the Middle East, that came out yesterday. A very personal statement, candid mea culpas, and very insightful. And he said, quote, "It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors the colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable," end-quote. I think people should read that on the website.

AMYGOODMAN: We will also link to that on our website at democracynow.org, where people can find the transcript of today’s discussion and also video and audio podcast our show. Thank you all for being with us.